But Sawalha stands by it. "In the world of Instagram, when so much of cookery is about, 'This is what I am and you're not; I bet you wish you were me; I'm so wonderful I could eat myself', if that doesn't say who we are, what does?" she asks with a cackle.

This is the duo in a nutshell. Best friends for more than two decades, they chat haphazardly over one another, sniping, laughing, buoying one another up and bickering.

Their lack of artifice, whether on telly or on their YouTube channel, is crucial, and without the latter, there'd be no cookbook. The pair are bona fide "middle-aged social-media sensations" - despite their kids' initial protestations (they have two daughters apiece). "My eldest daughter can't stay far enough away from it, she's wholly embarrassed and wishes I would crawl under a stone," says Adams.

18,000 subscribers are tough to ignore though. They test products - and recently got a million hits for a video in which they tried cosmetic tape for holding your neck and face up. "It's basically medical grade Sellotape," says Adams with a grin - chat about everything from hair loss to alcohol addiction, and on Thursday nights, stream live from Sawalha's kitchen.

"We usually just go, 'Oh, let's film something'. We open the fridge, have a look and just get going, we don't have any plan," says London-born Sawalha.

"We're quite juvenile. We're reclaiming our immaturity," adds Adams.

They started cooking together because "Kaye really was, there's no doubt about it, disaster chef", explains Sawalha, who won Celebrity MasterChef in 2007 and has a slew of her own cookbooks already. Adams pulls her phone out and scrolls to a picture of a brown flip-flop-shaped mess that is apparently 'pitta con funghi' ("We should definitely film people's reactions to it," says Sawalha, with another cackle).

They started posting Adams's not-so appetising dishes on Facebook and realised a lot of people could relate - cooking together on camera became a no-brainer, and the book brings everything together.

"I'm not cheffy at all. I'm only a home cook. I've never done caramel baskets or anything, but Kay made me realise that not everyone knows what it means when you say, 'Fry the onions until they're transparent'," says ex-EastEnders actress, Sawalha.

Disaster Chef is full of "real food, to get you through life", says Glasgow-based Adams, and is peppered with basic tips and tricks from Sawalha - from getting your steak out of the fridge half an hour before cooking it so it won't be tough, to tipping your drained potatoes back into the hot pan to dry out before mashing them. Stuff she'd assumed people knew, before Stirlingshire-born Adams pointed out that we don't all have the "building blocks to jump in there".

"I've managed to successfully make it through life 'til this point, I just missed out on the cooking thing," says Adams. "I don't have the cheffy language, I don't have the references. It was never something I felt a great connection with. My mum wasn't particularly into it; you go to university, you're eating crap, it just passed me by." She even remembers at school making a pineapple-the-right-way-up cake by accident ("I did get top marks in the theory though").

But Adams is learning. "She made this," says Sawalha, pointing at the book's berry pavlova recipe. "We didn't have any home ecs, or stylists. We cooked the food in the house and my husband took the photos. She did the whole thing - I was really, really drunk there, you can see how pissed I was in the pictures (it was an accident, I hadn't eaten!).

"I'm well proud of her - but anyone can make that. If you do every single one of these things, you will create that; simple as that," she says, stabbing the instructions on the page for emphasis.

"Without those specific instructions," says Adams, "I'd think, 'Well this is a disaster, I can't make a pavlova, I'm a rubbish cook', and walk to Waitrose, whereas it's a lovely moment when you follow something and it works. You think, 'Wow'."

Feeding your family can still be a hassle - whether you love cooking or not

For Adams, despite her improvements, cooking will always be something of a chore. "Even if I get better at it, it's not going to be the thing that makes me relax and calm down," she says. "At the end of the day, the kids need to be fed, it's another thing that 'needs to be done'."

But for Sawalha, the kitchen is her happy place. "My husband will be like, 'You've had a really hard day, don't be silly, we'll get a takeaway'. No! I've had a really stressful day, so I want to cook!" she says. "But just because I can cook doesn't mean I want to be using 20 different ingredients and spending two hours in the kitchen every night - I don't, I want to bang it on the table and I want everyone to shut up and eat it."

While their YouTube channel has been a terrific success, and Disaster Chef has done wonders for Adams' culinary powers, the whole thing has induced a sad state of affairs for their relationship.

"I don't think we've been for a meal or had a glass of bloody prosecco at the end of a show," says Sawalha, comically outraged at their lives being forever captured onscreen.

"When we've got the camera on, it's all very fizzy and organic," Adams deadpans. "When it's off, we sit slumped, slack-jawed in the back of the car, staring at each other."

Pretend paella

Ingredients:

(Serves 4)

2-3tbsp olive oil

2 onions, sliced

3 medium tomatoes, cut into 8

3-6 garlic cloves, finely chopped

300g basmati rice

Pinch of saffron threads

1 heaped tsp smoked paprika (optional)

150ml dry sherry or white wine

400ml hot fish stock (from a cube is fine)

400g pack of frozen seafood mix

100g frozen peas

Lemon wedges, to serve

Handful of chopped parsley leaves, to serve

Method:

1. Heat the oil in a large frying pan over a medium heat. Add the onions and garlic and cook for two to three minutes, stirring, until softened. Add the tomatoes and stir.

2. Add the rice, saffron and paprika (if using), and stir for one minute.

3. Pour in the sherry or wine. Increase the heat to bring up to the bubble for one minute, stirring to burn off the alcohol, then reduce the heat to medium.

4. Add the stock and seafood mix, cover, and simmer very gently for 15 minutes over a low heat, or until the rice and fish are cooked. Add the peas three minutes before the end. Don't stir.

5. When the rice is tender and the liquid is absorbed, you're ready to go, with a good squeeze from the lemon wedges, and a flourish of chopped parsley.

Tip: Feel free to add chunks of fried chorizo, if you eat meat.

Pea soup

Ingredients:

(Serves 4)

30g unsalted butter

4 spring onions, chopped

500g frozen petits pois

500ml vegetable stock, plus extra if needed

1tbsp lemon juice, or to taste

Pinch of sugar, or to taste

Salt and freshly ground white pepper

6 rashers of smoked streaky bacon (optional)

Method:

1. Melt the butter in a large saucepan over a low heat. Add the spring onions and cook until softened but not coloured.

2. Tip in the petits pois and stock and bring to the boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for about five minutes, or until the peas are tender.

3. Using a blender or a hand-held blender, whizz until smooth (only half-fill the blender and be careful, as hot soup scalds). Add more stock if you'd like a thinner soup.

4. Stir in the lemon juice, sugar, salt and pepper, then taste and adjust all these seasonings to taste.

5. Grill the bacon (if using) until nice and crisp. You can do this ahead of time and keep it on a piece of kitchen paper, so it stays crisp.

6. Ladle the soup into four warmed bowls and crumble over the crispy bacon.

1. On a large piece of baking parchment, draw around a 23cm dinner plate with a pencil. Turn the parchment over so it's pencil-side down and place on a baking tray. Preheat the oven to 150°C (300°F/Gas 2).

2. Clean a large glass or metal bowl with a little bit of vinegar or lemon juice.

3. Separate the eggs, ensuring the whites are completely free of yolk. Pour the egg whites into the super-clean bowl.

4. Using an electric whisk, beat the egg whites on a slow speed, then gradually increase the speed to medium until they reach the soft peak stage.

5. Increase the speed of the whisk to its highest, then, whisking continuously, add the sugar, a spoonful at a time, until the meringue is shiny and the sugar thoroughly mixed in. If you were to hold the whisk upside-down now, the meringue would stand up in proud (stiff) peaks.

6. In a cup, whisk together the vinegar and cornflour until smooth. Whisk this mixture into the meringue.

7. Spread the meringue to fill the baking parchment circle, building up the sides so that they stand higher than the middle. Place in the oven and bake for one hour. Once baked, turn off the oven and leave the door ajar. Leave the pavlova inside the oven until it has cooled completely. This stops it from cracking.

8. Combine the chilled cream with the vanilla extract and icing sugar (if using) in a large bowl. Beat on a low setting using an electric whisk, then gradually increase the speed to medium and whisk just until the cream increases in volume and begins to stiffen, but still has soft peaks. Dollop the cream into the centre of the cooled pavlova.

9. Scatter the blueberries, raspberries and strawberries over the cream and dust with icing sugar. Ta-Dah!

Nadia And Kaye Disaster Chef by Nadia Sawalha and Kaye Adams, photography by Mark Adderley, is published by DK, priced £20. Available now.

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